Author: Saâd Kadhi

We are proud to announce the immediate availability of Cerana 0.9 (TheHive 3.0.9) and Cortex 2.0.4. These hotfix releases address a number of issues and we encourage you to update your current installation at your earliest opportunity. For your comfort and sanity. Seriously.

Note: the Bluecoat analyzer was removed since it does not comply with the updated Terms of Service of Symantec Web Pulse SiteReview. Symantec does no longer permit programmatic querying of the service.

Fixes in Cerana 0.9

#527: display long reports when the analyst clicks on the corresponding short reports. Meh!

#541: make the drop-down menu for case templates scroll when there is a truckload of them.

Support

Something does not work as expected? You have troubles installing or upgrading? Spotted new bugs? No worries, please open issues on GitHub or comment on existing ones, join our user forum, contact us on Gitter, or send us an email at support@thehive-project.org. We are here to help.

Correction: April 14, 2018An earlier version of this post did not mention that the Bluecoat analyzer was removed in the latest Cortex Analyzers repository release.

There’s a new version of your ultimate observable analysis engine in town : Cortex 2.0.3 is out!

Cortex 2.0.3 contains a few important enhancements over its predecessor and fixes a number bugs as described in the full changelog summarised below. So get it while it’s still hot out of the digital oven and let us know how tasty it is.

Source : Quickmeme.com

Implemented Enhancements

#81: reflect proxy changes in the global configuration at the analyzer level

You can read the full changelog if you like but if you want to enjoy the goods right away, git pull is your friend.

Support

Something does not work as expected? You have troubles installing or upgrading? Spotted new bugs? No worries, please open issues on GitHub or comment on existing ones, join our user forum, contact us on Gitter, or send us an email at support@thehive-project.org. We are here to help.

After announcing Cortex 2.0.0 and TheHive 3.0.7, the first version of your favorite SIRP that is (supposedly) compatible with the brand-new version of Cortex, last week, we thought it was time to relax and enjoy the upcoming, long Easter weekend, the sunny sky of Paris (if you can pierce the veil of the Forever Grey Cloud™ that is hanging over the city of lights), and great jazz music. Heck, I even tweeted about it … only to be proven wrong by Life (and Murphy).

We literally field tested Cortex 2 for 3 weeks, we squashed bugs here and there, until almost the very last minute before the release. And yet, our QA needs to be improved by leaps and bounds as we had to release Cortex 2.0.1 one day after unveiling 2.0.0 to correct some additional bugs. And then some members of the core team and of our growing user community took it for a spin. And all hell broke lose. Well, almost 🙂

Session collisions (when TheHive and Cortex 2 are used on the same machine), analyzer malfunctions, connectivity problems … issues that were not identified during the testing phase, even in a production environment, where everything worked as expected. And we call this ‘Computer Science’. Right, right…

So we worked hard, took out our Code Hammer (it’s like Thor’s but cyber) and blasted away all the bugs that we found out or that were reported to us (arigato gozaimasu!) and we are happy to announce the immediate availability of Cortex 2.0.2, TheHive 3.0.8, Cortexutils 1.2.3 and Cortex-Analyzers 1.9.2.

TL;DR Install or upgrade Cortex 2.0.2, update Cortexutils, git pull the Cortex-analyzers repo to get the latest version of the repository, upgrade to TheHive 3.0.8, follow the Quick Start Guide and have a drink.

If you have time (which is admittedly quite scarce nowadays), please read on the changelogs:

What’s Next?

As stated in the previous post, we will release a new version of Cortex4py in order to make it compatible with Cortex 2, continue the work we started with our MISP Project friends to support MISP attribute enrichment through Cortex 2 (MISP currently only supports enrichment using Cortex 1), and perform a long-overdue overhaul of our documentation. We will also release a brand new version of TheHive4py.

Last but not least, we’ll take a hard look at ourselves and our QA. You expect us from us high quality and we hold ourselves to high standards. And we will deliver.

Support

Something does not work as expected? You have troubles installing or upgrading? Spotted new bugs? No worries, please open issues on GitHub or comment on existing ones, join our user forum, contact us on Gitter, or send us an email at support@thehive-project.org. We are here to help.

Authentication

To connect your favorite Security Incident Response Platform with Cortex 2, you will need to update TheHive to Cerana 0.7 (TheHive 3.0.7) which was released today as well. This version fixes a regression pertaining to case templates introduced by Cerana 0.6 and is the first version to fully support Cortex 2’s API changes and authentication.

To make TheHive 3.0.7 analyze observables at scale through Cortex 2, you have to create an account on Cortex 2 with the read and analyze roles (see the next section) and generate the associated API Key. Next, feed the key in TheHive’s /etc/thehive/application.confas described in the documentationet voilà !

TheHive 3.0.7 remains compatible with Cortex 1 and you can connect it to a mixed set of Cortex 1 and/or Cortex 2 instances with no issues.

Organizations, Analyzers and Rate Limiting

Cortex 2 introduces multi-tenancy through organizations and each organization can have its own set of users, with different roles, its own set of analyzers and, if necessary, rate limits that will prevent analysts from burning quotas.

Multi-tenancy has several interesting use cases. For instance, if you are the CSIRT or CERT of a large multinational organization with several regional teams, you can create an organization for each region within your constituency and enable the analyzers that they may need to use. Let’s assume that you bought a VirusTotal subscription that limits you to 5000 requests per month. You can configure the corresponding analyzers to give each region a fair share of that quota and keeping some requests for your own use.

In case you are a commercial CSIRT or an MSSP, you could do the same for your customers by installing only one Cortex 2 instance and creating an organization for each customer.

Configure an analyzer graphically and impose rate limits if necessary

User Roles

By default, Cortex 2 is shipped with the default cortex organization which sole purpose is to create other ones and manage the users within each organization and their associated powers. The cortex organization hosts all users with the superAdmin role and it cannot be used to configure or run analyzers.

As described in the new Quick Start Guide, after installing Cortex 2, updating its database and creating the first user who will have super admin powers, you’ll have to create your first organization and at least one user within that organization with orgAdmin rights.

Create an organization

You can then log out and log in using the orgAdmin account to create further users within that organization, enable and configure analyzers etc. Please note that no analyzer is enabled by default and you need at least v 1.9.0 of the cortex-analyzers repository. To update your set of analyzers to 1.9.0, please run git pull.

Manage users within an organization

Besides the superAdmin and orgAdmin roles, Cortex 2 introduces the read role which allows users to access analyzer reports and read them but not execute analyzers. For that, users need the analyze role (which implies the read role). orgAdmin users can also run analyzers. superAdmin users are limited to the default cortex organization. While they can create organizations and manage users within them, they cannot access analyzer configurations such as confidential API keys or job reports.

Job reports

Report Persistence and Caching

Cortex 2 relies on Elasticsearch 5.x to store many configuration items but also all the analyzer reports that have been generated. Unlike its predecessor, you won’t lose your existing reports should you need to restart the service or the host it is running on.

Cortex 2 also introduces report caching. By default the cache.job parameter is set to 10 minutes in /etc/cortex/application.conf. That means that if an analysis on a given observable with a defined TLP is requested and that a report has been previously generated in the last 10 minutes, Cortex 2 will serve that report instead of running a new analysis. This feature can help prevent soliciting analyzers, particularly those which require a subscription or have quotas, when there is no need to do so. Please note that this parameter is global to all the analyzers and all the organizations that are configured in the Cortex 2 instance. We do have plans to make it more granular in future versions.

Migrating from Cortex 1

If you are migrating from Cortex 1.x, we recommend that you:

Save the configuration of your analyzers (which ones are enabled and what their configuration items are, such as users/passwords or API keys).

Follow the remaining steps of the Quick Start Guide to enable the analyzers you need and reinject their configuration.

What’s Next?

In the upcoming weeks, we will release a new version of Cortex4py in order to make it compatible with Cortex 2, continue the work we started with our MISP Project friends to support MISP attribute enrichment through Cortex 2 (MISP currently only supports enrichment using Cortex 1), and perform a long-overdue overhaul of our documentation.

Feeling Generous? Donate!

As you know, we are a FOSS project and donations are always welcome to make our products even better for the community.

All donations go to Creative Source, the non-profit organization we have created, and we will use them to improve TheHive, Cortex & Hippocampe but also to develop (even better) integrations with other FOSS solutions such as MISP.

Creative Source can also provide so-called professional, entreprise-grade support, help integrating the products, train your analysts before they drain or assist you in specific areas such as developing in-house analyzers for Cortex.

Waiting for the menu, one of the numerous guests of TheHive Project’s world-renowned code restaurant grows impatient. He stands up and walks toward the kitchen, looking for a waiter to chastise. It’s certainly a free meal and, looking at the reviews on CodeAdvisor, a delicious one. But guests shouldn’t wait more than two minutes to get a copy of the menu, right?

As he approaches the door leading to the kitchen, it slams open and an all-smiling, all-French-looking man dressed in a bee costume comes out carrying hot plates. Peering at their content, the once angry guest cheers up as he stares down at Cerana 0.4 or TheHive 3.0.4 if you prefer. If the looks and smells of the dish match its taste, this will be a terrific meal.

As he sees how Cerana 0.4 prompted a change of heart of the guest, the waiter coming out of the kitchen where TheHive Chefs were busy creating this new recipe goes on describing its content.

‘Mon bon Monsieur‘, he starts in near-perfect Parisian-English accent, ‘this is the plat du jour, or the dish of the day if you prefer. Even though the mighty Chefs insist on calling it a hotfix, not only it fixes eleven bugs in previous versions but it adds four new features and two enhancements. Would you like me to describe them?’

The guest, feeling hungry, his mouth watery, but feeling bad about what he was about to say to the waiter just a few seconds ago nods. So the waiter goes on and describe how the latest release of TheHive will serve his hunger for efficient though free security incident response platforms even better.

At this point, the guest cannot control his lust so he snatches one of the plates out the waiter’s hands, runs back to his table and start installing Cerana 0.4 to unleash its power and use it to fight cybercrime. Bon appétit !

Feeling Generous? Donate!

As you know, we are a FOSS project and donations are always welcome to make our products even better for the community.

All donations go to Creative Source, the non-profit organization we have created, and we will use them to improve TheHive, Cortex & Hippocampe but also to develop (even better) integrations with other FOSS solutions such as MISP.

Creative Source can also provide so-called professional, entreprise-grade support, help integrating the products, train your analysts before they drain or assist you in specific areas such as developing in-house analyzers for Cortex.

Download & Get Down to Work

If you have an existing installation of TheHive, please follow the migration guide.

If you are performing a fresh installation, read the installation guide corresponding to your needs and enjoy. Please note that you can install TheHive using an RPM or DEB package, use Docker, install it from a binary or build it from sources.

Two months ago, TheHive Chefs announced that Cortex passed the 30 analyzers mark as they added HybridAnalysis, EmergingThreats and Shodan, all three contributed by our continuously growing user community.

It’s 2018 already and to wish you a very happy new DFIR year, Nils and Jérôme got out of their way and reviewed many outstanding pull requests for new analyzers and fixed several bugs. Kudos bees!

MISP WarningLists: Nils strikes again (watch out Jérôme! the youngster is gonna leave you way behind ;).

Onyphe: contributed by Pierre Baudry and Adrien Barchapt. It comes in five different flavors.

PayloadSecurity: submitted by Emmanuel Torquato. The analyzer comes in two flavors.

Robtex: added by… Nils again! It has three flavors.

SinkDB: guess who developed that one? Wow, impressive! How did you figure it out? Yes, Nils!

Tor Blutmagie: contributed by Marc-André Doll.

Tor Project: also contributed by Marc-André Doll.

We would like to wholeheartedly thank all the individuals and teams listed above for their invaluable contributions. So a big merci for your work!

Bluecoat

The Bluecoat analyzer queries the Symantec – previously known as Bluecoat – WebPulse site review API for the currently assigned site category of URLs or domains. The analyzer needs no further configuration. When executed through TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports as shown below:

TheHive: Bluecoat 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

C1fApp

The C1fApp analyzer queries the C1fApp service, an Open Source threat feed aggregation application, using the API for IP addresses, domains and URL.

Before using the analyzer, you need to create an account on the C1fApp website and get the associated API key which you’ll need to provide as a value for the key parameter of the analyzer config section of /etc/cortex/application.conf as shown below. Once you’ve done so, you’ll need to restart Cortex.

When launched using TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: C1fApp 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

Censys.io

Censys.io continually monitors every reachable server and device on the Internet, so you can search for them and analyze them in real time. Using the corresponding analyzer, information about a website certificate can be obtained using the associated IP, domain or certificate hash.

In order to use this analyzer, an account at censys.io has to be registered and the API ID and secret need to be added to the Cortex configuration file:

Censys {
uid="<Your ID here>"
key="<Your secret here>"
}

Once done, you’ll have to restart Cortex. When ran from TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: Censys 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

Details about the ports can be obtained with a click on the specific button.

MISP WarningLists

In order to detect false positives soon enough in the analysis process, our good friends at the MISP Project published their so called warning lists which contain lists of well-known services or indicators.

This analyzer queries observables against the MISP warning lists. Observables can be an IP address, a hash, a domain, a FQDN or a URL.

To iterate through all the warning lists, the repository itself must be available on the Cortex instance:

git clone https://github.com/MISP/misp-warninglists

We highly recommend you create a cron entry or use a similar mechanism to keep the lists fresh. While the default path for the lists is the misp-warninglists subdirectory it can be adjusted in the configuration file:

To use the analyzer, you need to create an account on the Onyphe website. Provide the API key associated with your account as a value for the key parameter and add the lines below to the config section of /etc/cortex/application.conf then restart the cortex service.

Onyphe {
key = "<insert API key here>"
}

When ran from TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: Onyphe 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

PayloadSecurity

The PayloadSecurity analyzer let you submit observables to a on-premises PayloadSecurity instance. To use it, you need to create an account on the PayloadSecurity service. Provide the API/secret pair as values for the key and secretparameters, collect the URL and environmentid of the service, and add the lines below to the ​​config section of /etc/cortex/application.conf. Then restart the cortex service.

When launched through TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: PayloadSecurity 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

Robtex

When collecting data about IPs, domains and FQDNs, Robtex can be a good source of information. According to their statistics, they logged over 20 billion DNS resource records. The corresponding analyzer comes in three flavors:

The analyzer uses the free Robtex API which needs no subsequent configuration. However, the free API limits the rate and amount of returned data.

When executed using TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: Robtex 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

SinkDB

SinkDB is a private service provided by abuse.ch which collects sinkholed IPs. Access to the service is allowed to trusted partners only. If you think you qualify, you can request an access using the form available on the SinkDB website. This is most likely only granted to certain CSIRTs and CERTs and not to individuals.

Provide the API key associated with your account as a value for the key parameter and add the lines below to the config section of /etc/cortex/application.conf then restart the cortex service.

SinkDB {
key="<insert API key here>"
}

When ran from TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: SinkDB 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

Tor Blutmagie

Tor Blutmagie analyzer extracts data from torstatus.blutmagie.de and checks if an observable is linked to a Tor node. The observable can be an IP address, a FQDN or a domain.

In order to check if an IP, domain or FQDN is a Tor exit node, this analyzer queries the Tor status service at Blutmagie.de. The analyzer uses a caching mechanism in order to save some time when doing multiple queries, so the configuration includes parameters for the cache directory and the caching duration.

Provide the lines below to the config section of /etc/cortex/application.conf then restart the cortex service.

TorBlutmagie {
cache {
duration=3600
root=/tmp/cortex/tor_project
}
}

When ran from TheHive, the analyzer produces short and long reports such as the following:

TheHive: Tor Blutmagie 1.0 Analyzer – Short and Long Report Samples

Tor Project

Tor Project analyzer has also been contributed by Marc-André Doll. As the above analyzer, this one checks if an observable is a Tor exit node. This time, however, the source of information is the official Tor network status which can be queried for IP addresses only.

The accepts another parameter, ttl, which is the threshold in seconds for exit nodes before they get discarded. Provide the lines below to the config section of /etc/cortex/application.conf then restart the cortex service.

Jeffrey Everling has identified a nasty privilege escalation vulnerability in all versions of TheHive, including Mellifera 13.2 (TheHive 2.13.2) and Cerana 0.2 (TheHive 3.0.2). Jeffrey reported it to us today Friday, Dec 22, 2017. Thanks but we could think of a better Christmas gift 😉

The vulnerability allows users with read-only or read/write access to escalate their privileges and eventually become administrators. To exploit it, an attacker must have access to an account on TheHive with read-only or read/write privileges.

The attacker needs to interact with the API in a specific though trivial way to obtain administrator privileges. After verifying that their request has been correctly processed, they connect to TheHive using the Web UI and they will see the administrator menu from where they can edit or lock user accounts, add case templates, etc.

We highly recommend you update TheHive to Cerana 0.3 (TheHive 3.0.3) which fixes the vulnerability. If you are still using Mellifera and have not made the move to Cerana yet, please update to Mellifera 13.3 (TheHive 2.13.3) which also corrects this flaw.

If you cannot immediately apply the hotfixes we have released, we have created a shell script that will allow you to spot anyone who exploited the vulnerability. You can download the script from the following location:

When you run the script, it will display all users that have changed their roles. Ifa single match is found, it means yourinstancehasbeenpotentially compromised. We advise you to create a crontab which will execute the script on a regular basis until you apply the hotfixes.

To Upgrade to Cerana 0.3 (TheHive 3.0.3)

If you are performing a fresh installation, read the installation guide corresponding to your needs and enjoy. Please note that you can install TheHive using an RPM or DEB package, use Docker, install it from a binary or build it from sources.